WIRED Binge-Watching Guide: 24

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WIRED Binge-Watching Guide: 24

Courtesy of Fox

If you have never watched a single minute of 24, you can probably still give a succinct summary of any one of its seasons. It's the kind of show that found a successful formula ("I'm federal agent Jack Bauer. This is the longest day of my life.") and stuck with it—for eight seasons, a TV movie, and a "limited-run event series."

Read More Binge-Watching GuidesThe WireSons of AnarchyBuffy the Vampire SlayerBut that doesn't mean it's not worth consuming in mass quantities. 24, for all its recycled plots and baffling latter-season flaws, tapped into the post-9/11 consciousness when it debuted in November 2001 and delivered a thrilling, must-watch package of "real time," action-packed twists, suspenseful cliffhangers, and best of all, a kick-ass all-American hero in Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer.

And Jack Bauer didn't just kick ass. He carried out some of television's most memorable kills, along with controversial torture sequences and gritty interrogations. He punched terrorists in the heart, blew up vans, and went on killing sprees—and that's just Season 1. What kept the series going beyond all the neck-snapping, bomb-detonating action, though, was its character study. We see Jack morph from a flawed-but-determined hero into a damaged man questioning why he does what he does across eight long days. Sure, those eight long days were packed with nuclear threats, terrorist plots, and kidnapped daughters, but dammit, they make for fantastic binge-watching sessions.

24

Number of Seasons: 8 (192 episodes), plus a TV movie, and 24: Live Another Day (12 episodes)

Time Requirements: Let's get really real: It's daunting to binge-watch 24. You're dealing with 146 hours of Jack Bauer (six days and two hours, in other words), and that's not including Live Another Day. On top of that, the show likes to remind you how much time you've spent watching it with that pesky countdown clock.

Even so, if you shoot for three episodes a night (about two and a half hours), with a target of nine episodes over the weekend, you should get through a season a week. Persevere with this structure, and you could finish the whole series in two months. To cut down on this time, skip two seasons (more on that later), the TV movie 24: Redemption, and save Live Another Day for, well, another day. That way, you can finish in about six weeks.

Where to Get Your Fix: Amazon Prime

Best Character to Follow: Jack. Hands down. In a show that happily adds and removes (and sometimes revives) characters, he's the only reliable character, as he appears in every episode, so you should default to caring about him. Aside from Jack, though, watch for Mary Lynn Rajskub's Chloe O'Brian starting in Season 3—she's dynamic, smart, and one of the few characters Jack trusts, and for good reason. Other than those two, you'll encounter a slew of recognizable faces (Zachary Quinto, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Katee Sackhoff, etc.), but make sure to follow President Allison Taylor (she appears in the TV movie and Seasons 7 and 8). Cherry Jones' performance as the politician made her instantly memorable and garnered Emmys for the show as it ran out its final seasons.

Seasons/Episodes You Can Skip: This one's easy: Season 6. Just don't bother. Sure, it's got some of the wackiest Jack kills—at one point, he chest-kicks a suicide bomber off a subway train, right before the bomber's vest goes off (!!!)—but it includes mind-numbing daddy-issues plotlines for Jack, among other missteps. It's not worth your binge time.

Next, eliminate Season 8. It's arguably the second-to-worst season, mostly because of its criminal misuse of Katee Sackhoff as Dana Walsh. Though the second half picked up, it's best to just fast-forward your way through to the series finale.

Finally, there's no need to squeeze 24: Redemption into your binge diet. It works well as a bridge between Seasons 6 and 7 (as mentioned above, it introduces Allison Taylor), but does little other than put Jack in another life-threatening situation, only this time in Africa.

If you have to cut even more out of your binge, skip the first act of Season 3. It's good, but not rest-of-Season-3 good. Start at episode 9, "9:00 p.m. — 10:00 p.m.," where the fun begins: A major character returns and Jack finally starts getting ahead of stopping the virus.

Then there's the Episode Everyone Says You Should Skip But You Should Watch Anyway: Season 2, "6 p.m. — 7 p.m." Yes, this is the one with the cougar. But you've heard of the cougar, haven't you? When binging 24, skipping over the cougar episode is sacrilege—it's a key moment in the show's turn toward the ridiculous, and you're not a true fan until you've sat through it. Besides, how will you understand that fantastic Happy Endings (RIP) reference until you've properly watched the episode?

Season/Episodes You Can't Skip: Do not, under any circumstances, skip anything in Seasons 1, 2 (fine, you can fast forward through the Kim subplot), and 5. (That's an order, dammit.) With that out of the way, definitely watch the following episodes as well.

Season 1: Episode 24, "11:00 p.m. — 12:00 a.m." The Season 1 finale ends with the best twist in 24 history, just when Jack thinks he's solved everything in his first Worst Day of His Life. If you haven't been spoiled yet in the 12 years since the episode aired, savor those final moments in Season 1—they turned the show into something much darker than viewers expected.

Season 2: Episode 24, "7:00 a.m. — 8:00 a.m." Yet, as dark as the show went (Jack goes through many iterations of Almost Dead trying to protect the country, including a stint with drug abuse), Bauer always doled out spectacular kills. The Season 2 finale saw Jack take on a stadium of terrorists, run up walls, and break a guy's neck, making for what was arguably the most epic Jack killing spree in the series.

Season 3: Episode 14, "2:00 a.m. — 3:00 a.m." This episode brings a painful arc (for Jack, at least) to a close with the death of a major character. It's also a showcase for one of Jack's harshest interrogations, and depicts how far he can be pushed.

Season 3: Episode 18, "6:00 a.m. — 7:00 a.m." The early morning hours of Season 3 brought pivotal twists, and in this episode, it brought what I believe to be one of the best scenes in the series. But besides its heartbreaking climax, the hour demonstrated the outstanding quality of the third season in general as Jack raced against the clock to stop what appeared to be an impenetrable enemy.

Season 5: Episode 1, "7:00 a.m. — 8:00 a.m." Watch the Season 5 premiere for its game-changing opening scene, when the show reminded viewers that anything could happen to anyone, and then marvel as it somehow manages to pick up the pieces and sprint forward in its action in less than an hour. Season 5 was the apex of 24, and it showed.

Season 5: Episode 23, "5:00 a.m. — 6:00 a.m." The penultimate episode of Season 5 saw a desperate Jack carrying out an assault on a terrorist-controlled submarine during its suspenseful first act. Jack's showdown against the ruthless Bierko is Classic Bauer, and a sequence you shouldn't miss.

Season 7: Episode 14, "9:00 p.m. — 10:00 p.m." Jack kills a guy with a screwdriver by throwing it into his chest. (I'm including this episode because it's just one of the WTF-est kills in the series. Jack Bauer brings a screwdriver to a gunfight. Season 7, everybody!)

Why You Should Binge:

As crazy as 24 was, its use of split-screen and real-time storytelling influenced countless TV series that followed, and Jack Bauer became a blueprint for action heroes like Liam Neeson's Bryan Mills in Taken. Plus, it was one of the first shows to invite binge-watching, releasing DVD box sets early after its first season to help viewers catch up. And if anything, the twists, kills, and epic Bauer speeches simply made for awesome TV.

Best Scene— "I'm Gonna Need a Hacksaw"

If you're watching for the shock factor of the show, then the Season 2 premiere had it all: Jack, still grief-stricken, goes back to the Counter Terrorist Unit to murder a terrorist from a group planning to detonate a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles. The thing is, he does it in front of everyone, then announces, "I'm gonna need a hacksaw," while looking at the corpse's neck. Gross. We couldn't find the clip online, but maybe you want to watch this supercut of Bauer kills instead?

The Takeaway:

Dammit, Chloe, I'm running out of time!

If You Liked 24 You'll Love:

Homeland. Brought to you by the same producers (Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon), the Claire Danes starrer hits similar notes of terrorism and national security. It's not as action-packed as 24 and has been criticized for venturing into unrealistic plots in its second and third seasons, but the Emmy-winning first season is one to watch.